


Love,

by nisargasinha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, I'm bad at tagging but whatever, Lie Low At Lupin's (Harry Potter), Look I did this and I'm not even sorry, M/M, first thing I've written since the pandemic and guess what it's an angst, it's literally every other lie low at Lupin's fic but idc, no beta we die like Sirius fucking Black, okay lmao I accidentally made myself cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29426112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisargasinha/pseuds/nisargasinha
Summary: Remus Lupin's kitchen, 1995.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	Love,

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a year since I last wrote a Wolfstar fic. I spent hours writing this and even though I don't think it's good enough, gonna post it as a celebration of me being back in the fandom actively. Without further ado, have fun (or be sad? I don't even know.) Apologies in advance for mistakes.

Seven knocks on the door and Remus exasperatedly looks at the torn wallpaper just above his kitchen counter. 

The tap is leaking and hell is breaking loose and Remus wants to fucking punch himself and fix everything before answering the door. 

Right. The door. 

He stands up from his earlier crouched position and wipes his hand on the tea towel and looks at the floorboard beneath his feet. He wants to ignore the knock and make the person outside wait and count hours and minutes and seconds to start over and over again because the numbers have gotten unexpectedly high and the visitor might call the neighbours in because  _ it's been so fucking long, has he evaporated or what? _

Instead, he looks over his shoulder, sparing a glance at the pathetic excuse for a kitchen-cum-sitting room and begrudgingly drags his feet across the floorboard to open the door. Suddenly, he feels so inexplicably tired. 

  
  


Sirius leans against the door frame, a cigarette casually hanging between his lips and Remus almost wants to laugh out of the sheer incredulity of the situation. 

"Hi", Sirius greets, quietly crushing the cigarette under his heel and looks at everywhere except Remus' face. 

Remus doesn't realize that he has been staring at Sirius' gaunt face until Sirius awkwardly coughs and startling, he asks, "Do you want some tea?" 

\-------

The water is boiling painfully fast and for the thousandth time in the last fourteen years, Remus wishes that it was him who went to Azkaban; that it was him who didn't have anything to say. He doesn't have anything to say now too, he realizes. Sirius is sitting on the sofa, vacantly looking at the wall. Remus feels an urgent need to throw up from the wretched whiteness of the silence between them. Instead, he busies himself in finding the remainder of Earl Grey at the back of his dusty and almost empty kitchen cupboards. 

"You have kept the book, I see?" 

Sirius' ragged voice makes him snap out of his miserable trance and he looks at Sirius' finger pointed at the copy of  _ Les Fleurs du Mal _ he gifted Remus on his 19th birthday. 

"Uh, yes?" 

Sirius nods and looks back at the torn wallpaper and the wall peeking behind it, disappearing from the world around him once again. 

Remus wants to cry. 

But he straightens his jumper and comes back with the tea. 

"Here.", he gently holds the mug out to Sirius. 

"Hmmm?", Sirius hums from several light years away, in such a low, lilting sadness that it breaks Remus. 

He takes a shuddering breath. It's already hard. He doesn't know who to blame though. Voldemort? Dumbledore? Sirius? Himself? It's just an epiphany of things said over and over again, things never said, things that he blocked in the mausoleum of his past, which feels like someone else's life altogether. 

"Your tea, Sirius."

"Oh. Right. Thank you." 

"How are you?", Remus feels like he's treading on eggshells, asks cautiously nonetheless. 

Sirius snorts from behind the mug, then clears his throat, "Was living in a cave. Eating rats. If that's what you're asking by 'how are you?'" 

Remus involuntarily flinches. It hurts. It hurts to see that they are the only ones left, that it's probably going to rain and except for offering Sirius the sound of rain, he doesn't know how to fill his void of chilling silence. Then he realizes, he doesn't know how to fill his own voids either. 

  
  


\--------

It rains that night. 

Remus comes downstairs to find Sirius facing the open window and staring blankly at the murky horizon, blurred in the sea.

He softly sits beside him, putting a tentative hand on Sirius' knee. 

"Sirius?" 

"How do I do it?" 

"Do what?"

"This", Sirius vaguely gestures at everything. 

Remus waits, listening to the drizzle outside, unsure of what Sirius means. It should have been different, he thinks. Sirius and him, they should have been cuddled up against each other, on the same sofa, watching rain. But here they are, not knowing what to do with each other, sitting side by side, watching the waves crashing on the shore and shattering, over and over again. The camaraderie looks unbelievably close to mockery and almost makes him laugh. Then again, he thinks that James and Lily deserved to be alive too. So did Marlene and Dorcas. The hot-white surge of anger leaves him so bereft that he starts fiddling with the loose thread of his worn-out jumper. 

"Did you believe them?" 

It comes staggeringly heavy. Remus stops to listen to the wind again. Maybe it'll rain again and the silence between them won't tear them apart anymore.  _ Void feels warmer when it rains, trust me,  _ he wants to tell Sirius;  _ do you want some rain for you too?,  _ he wants to ask;  _ did you remember me in Azkaban,  _ he wants to ask. 

Instead, he looks at Sirius' side profile, the edges of his cheekbones sharper than he remembers, and suddenly realizes that they don't call each other by nicknames anymore. 

"Did you?", the question comes again, quieter this time, and Remus tries to stop the refrain of  _ Did you believe them  _ inside his brain because they were never good at discussing betrayals. It usually ended with a cold bed and a colder flat. 

Sirius waits quietly, holding a half-lit cigarette between his fingers, the embers burning it down to ashes in vain. Remus briefly wonders whether Sirius is keeping it alight as a metaphor for himself, burning himself down without a quiver, before responding, "Sirius--" 

"Please." 

Remus stops midway. 

"I think I did.", he whispers. 

"Oh." 

The waxing crescent moon softly presses her silhouette onto the floorboard beneath their feet and Remus feels suffocated. The sea never felt colder, he thinks, before quietly adding, 

"You left me." 

"Does it hurt?"

"What?" 

_ What, love? _

"The scar above your left eyebrow?"

"No.", Remus stops, "Not anymore."

  
  


"I'm sorry." 

"It's okay." 

They sit on the edge of lost rains, quietly offering each other  _ nothing.  _ Voids and edges and tears come back and grapple into the sinews and bones with a cold tranquility, so that it doesn't make sense anymore. Remus wants to tell Sirius,  _ I loved you, I love you;  _ wants to tell him,  _ Stay,  _ but then he realizes how little he's known Sirius for last fourteen years, how he doesn't know the feeling of his body under his palms, and the crevices and scars and the silence don't know how to feel attuned to him anymore. 

He mourns. The loss of an absent lover, in the sight of his lost home sitting right beside him, jolts him back to the reality of could-have-beens. In the sacred grief of losing it all again, in its venerable cruelty, Remus prays to whoever is watching over. His fingers itch to touch Sirius' free hand, to see whether it still feels home or hits sharp like his mother's funeral dirge. 

Instead, he looks at Sirius and asks, as if Sirius has heard how he's repeated _ , I love you  _ for past few minutes  _ or maybe years,  _ like a hymn inside his head, 

"Did you?" 

Sirius looks at him, for the first time in the evening, "What?" 

The tired drawl of Sirius' voice spirals him back to reality. He looks back at the open window and watches the rain drumming on the windowsill, "Love me?" 

Sirius goes back staring at the mute walls with a muter expression. Remus starts wondering whether it's been eloquently reckless of him to ask something so incredibly personal. 

"I.. I just lose grip on the present. When I was in there, all I could see was James and Lily's burnt house..", Sirius whispers, "..every full moon, I'd see the moon waning and waxing and I'd apologise to you. All these years, time has slipped through my fingers like sand and I… I thought I'd left you for good, I thought you'd have someone whole, someone who isn't broken like me... I didn't want to be a burden on you. I… I'll go away tomorrow. I know it hurts you." 

_ Stay,  _ Remus' mind screams. He wants to punch and kiss and yell at him, wants to tell him how much love he still has to offer, more than enough for both of them. He thinks how he's seen mornings of sad cities, has shared kisses with nameless lovers pressed on the back alley of dingy bars; has let the grief settle inside his chest like a distant howl, and draped it around himself in front of enshrouded pretense of living, only to stop himself from immersing into the void of forgetting and not-forgetting Sirius, loving and unloving him. 

Instead, he reaches out for Sirius' hand, cups his cheeks, and whispers before leaning into a kiss, 

"It hurts more to let you go." 

  
  
_Fin._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
